


Leviathan

by Saathi1013



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Female Protagonist, Loss of Virginity, Magic, Mild Gore, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saathi1013/pseuds/Saathi1013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She dreams that night of the sea, throwing itself against the cliffs under a moonless sky. It smells of salt, aye, but of iron as well.  </p><p>There are <i>things</i> beneath the surface, things with names her tongue cannot pronounce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leviathan

**Author's Note:**

> No beta, my apologies; quick sketchfic after watching the movie. Errors, if pointed out, will be corrected with alacrity.

When it is done, Snow White falls to her knees and retches, bile and the remnants of that morning's light meal splattering against the flagstones.  
  
 _{{ William had given it to her as they rode to the castle, bread and hard cheese wrapped in a rag, apology in his eyes for the rough rations. She hadn't the heart to remind him that such a meal was familiar to her. He would give her that **look**  again, and she was bearing so much else already... }}_  
  
Grit grinds under her fingertips, and Snow looks up to see Ravenna's corpse turning to ash, the slumped figure crumbling under its own weight. There is no heat, no flame, no spark consuming her so. The body disintegrates very quickly, cloth and metal and bone as easily as skin and hair, the particles dancing and eddying in unseen drafts.  
  
The Mirror gleams above them.  
  
By the time the others reach them, Snow is standing again, and there is only the faintest shadow of dust on the dais.  
  
***  
  
Snow dreams that night.  
  
She stands in a field of bodies that stretches to the horizon, all pinned to the ground by shards of black glass. The winter sun is high and distant above, and everything is covered in a light sheet of snow. Rivulets of crimson form streams and small pools between the bodies.  
  
There are  _things_  beneath the surface of the pools. They writhe, and stir the surface with their scales, but they never emerge to clarity.  
  
Snow reaches out towards the closest pool, as one does foolish things in dreams.  
  
A raven clears its throat, harsh and raw in the silence. Snow looks up, sees a girl in a golden cloak, standing barefoot in the snow. "Don't," the girl says and lifts a hand in warning. The cloak parts around her outstretched arm, and Snow sees that the cloak is just the girl's hair, falling unbound to her ankles, and the child wears nothing else.  
  
"Aren't you cold?" Snow asks the girl.  
  
"Very," the girl answers solemnly in Ravenna's voice.  
  
Snow wakes with a gasp in the dark, the taste of ashes in her throat.  
  
***  
  
The seamstress is fat, and frightened, and silent, her left arm curled protectively against her chest. "Her name is Clara. She worked for the Queen," Duke Hammond explains. "And your mother before her."  
  
"You remember my mother?" Snow says, glad for the opportunity to tease out memories, eager for the kind touches and warm chatter she remembers from childhood fittings.  
  
Clara looks up tentatively and nods.  
  
"She cannot speak," the Duke explains gently. "All of your stepmother's favorites were... treated with great care."  
  
Snow understands the layered meaning to his words when Clara pulls out a measuring ribbon. The two smallest fingers on Clara's left hand are missing.  
  
And Clara  _cannot_  speak.  
  
"Oh," Snow says, and looks away towards the bolts of cloth, piled high on the table. There is so much black, silver, and gold... "I'm so sorry."  
  
***  
  
Snow cannot sleep. Or rather, she does not  _wish_  to sleep in the guest room with its silken sheets and cobwebs still in the rafters. Ravenna had not entertained much; those nobles she could cow or conquer, she did. She had no time for gentle politics, for balls and for ambassadors.  
  
The maps have all changed, and Snow will have to relearn the borders of her lands. She would give territory back to its rightful rulers, if there were any still alive to receive it.  
  
For now, she builds herself a fire in the fireplace and huddles close to it in a musty chair.  
  
Despite herself, she sleeps.  
  
***  
  
The castle is empty, and filled with ash. Its walls still stand, though the rooms are empty and the stones are bare. It is as if a great conflagration rose within, burning the furniture and carpets but leaving the rafters and thatching.  
  
Snow White leaves a trail of footprints behind her, following a whisper up and up and up the staircase.  
  
A beam of moonlight falls upon the great Mirror, its metal dulled to grey beneath its curtain of ash. Snow reaches up to wipe it away and jumps back when she sees Ravenna staring back at her from the metal's surface.  
  
Ravenna looks  _sad,_  and Snow reaches out again.  
  
At her touch, the gold ripples, flowing over her hand and her arm like syrup, warm and gentle but inexorable. Soon, she is  _drenched_  in it, the weight dragging her arms down, her shoulders back, her spine straight as a rod. It laps around her throat, but no higher, until tendrils thread through her hair and a weight settles atop her head: a crown.  
  
Then the gold quiets, pooling around her ankles and hanging from her wrists in sleeves that spatter fat droplets in the ash. The drops roll towards her and rejoin the puddle of her train, like errant hunting dogs creeping back to their master's heels. They leave little trails, lines in the ash like rays of the sun.  
  
When she looks up again, Ravenna stands before her, bare as a babe. There is a wound in her chest, raw and open.  
  
Snow finds herself reaching out to touch the mortal injury she had delivered, only days ago. Her fingers curl and she finds herself slipping one finger within, then two, pushing  _inside_  Ravenna's chest until she can touch her stepmother's heart.  
  
It bites her questing fingers with an icy chill, and Snow wakes to find the fire dead in the hearth.  
  
***  
  
William is gentle, and kind, and courtly, with manners that bemuse Snow. She has fond memories of the two of them as children, slipping their tutors' watch and behaving as ruffians throughout the stables and courtyards. He is not the boy she knew; she is not the lady he expects. But he is kind, and so she keeps her hands still as they walk. She listens carefully as he explains the preparations for her coronation.  
  
Idly, she wonders if he will ask her to marry him before or after she is crowned, and the thought stops her in her tracks.  
  
"..is everything all right?" he asks.  
  
 _No,_  she thinks, and "Yes," she says. "My mind was wandering. What was that about the standard-bearers?"  
  
They continue on, winding through hallways and gardens.  The servants whisper in their wake about what a handsome couple they make.  
  
***  
  
She slips away from dinner early, pleading a headache, but finds herself going to Ravenna's tower instead of towards her own room. The guards say nothing as she passes them, only open the doors solicitously. As they  _ought_  do, she reminds herself, though she listens behind her for the familiar clang of a lock.  
  
The high room looks as if no one has been here in centuries. Cobwebs tether every candle to their tables, the fabrics are moth-eaten, and everything smells faintly of rot. Snow sneezes, and wipes her nose on her sleeve before remembering that it's unladylike.  
  
The Mirror, however, is pristine. No spider has dared spin its web there, no tarnish has encroached, no mote of dust has landed on its surface.  
  
All Snow sees is herself, and the metal is cool and unyielding against her palm.  
  
Satisfied, she returns to her rooms.  
  
***  
  
Sometime after midnight, there is a gentle knock at her door. She's not sure who she expects, but she is pleasantly surprised by the huntsman nonetheless.  
  
"I'm leaving at dawn," Eric tells her. "I... I'm of no use to you here."  
  
Snow lifts her chin and stares him down. "No, you're not," she says. "Not leaving, I mean."  
  
"No?" he says.  
  
"No." She takes his hand and pulls him inside. "I need you here."  
  
The door closes silently behind them.  
  
***  
  
She dreams that night of the sea, throwing itself against the cliffs under a moonless sky. It smells of salt, aye, but of iron as well.  There are  _things_  beneath the surface, things with names her tongue cannot pronounce.  
  
"Leviathan," Ravenna says behind her, and Snow does not turn. She is oddly at ease, though she can feel the Queen's presence so so close at her back. "Sea serpents.  They will drag you under if you let them. They would see you drowned."  
  
Ravenna's hand comes to settle, lightly, on Snow's shoulder, forefinger and thumb against her bare neck. Her nails are very, very sharp, and yet Snow is unafraid. Ravenna is beyond harming her now.  
  
Ravenna whispers a word, and dawn sweeps upwards from the horizon in a blinding rush. Before Snow closes her eyes against the glare, she sees the ocean, calm and still at Ravenna's command. It reflects the sunlight like -  
  
***  
  
When Snow wakes, she is alone, but the pillows smell of the forest, and there are three smeared drops of blood on the white, white sheets.  
  
***  
  
The huntsman -  _her_  huntsman - comes every night, and leaves before dawn. She breaks fast with the slowly returning remnants of the court, spends her mornings with Clara, her afternoons with William, and her dinners and evenings with whoever seems to need her most, Duke Hammond often advising her in matters of reconstructing her kingdom. She learns the boundaries of her lands on the maps, and makes travel plans for after her coronation to circumnavigate the borders and treat with neighbors and prominent landowners.  
  
"Most of them are thugs," Eric tells her one night, when they are alone. "The Queen set an example when she ruled by fear and desperation. The lordlings you'll dine with in those border towns are settled bandits, their finery and their titles cut from dead men's backs. The coastal barons will be pirates and slavers."  
  
Snow draws away from him. "Why did you tell me that?" She asks. "My visit will legitimize their rule, but we've already pledged to go."  
  
"I thought you'd rather know," he says. "I thought you already  _did_  know. Hasn't the Duke or his son explained how things are now?"  
  
"...not this," she says. "At least, not yet." She wonders when William was going to tell her of whole noble families slaughtered because it suited Ravenna to have the kingdom cowering.  
  
"Will there be any men I can trust?" she asks.  
  
"Oh, aye. But you'll find them broken. You should pray they raised sturdy sons who were too far away to be easily hunted, and too smart to give Ravenna a reason to kill them from afar."  
  
Snow thinks about this for a while.  
  
"I don't pray anymore," she confesses in a furtive whisper, expecting outrage.  
  
He huffs a rueful laugh and pulls her back agains his side. "Neither do I, Princess."  
  
***  
  
In Eric's arms, her dreams fade in intensity. She barely remembers them anymore, besides echoes of whispers: Ravenna talking, warm and patient and occasionally  _fond._  
  
Like a loving mother.  
  
Those whispers haunt her, in the daylight, but when she meets Eric's eyes across the dining hall, it gets easier.  
  
***  
  
And then it gets worse. A servant comes in early, or Eric sleeps too late, and Snow wakes to a shriek (the maid's) and a shout (Eric's).  
  
It's all over the castle by noon.  
  
***  
  
William does not show up for lunch, and Snow seeks him out. He's on the ramparts overlooking the sea when she finds him, shooting arrows at a hay bale. "Have you been up here this whole time?" she asks.  
  
"Have you been playing me a fool this whole time?" he retorts, and looses another arrow. It skips across the top of the bale and clatters over the battlements.  He curses under his breath.  
  
"Your father told you," she replies.  
  
"Of course he  _told_  me! I can't marry you now - and don't expect you'll be able to marry that low-born-"  
  
"Who said anything about  _marriage?_ " she interrupts.  _"You_  certainly didn't. And let's not take noble blood into account here, when half the men with eligible titles  _stole_  them from their true owners at the point of a sword!" William's eyes widen, and she gentles her voice to something sickeningly sweet. "Or didn't you think I'd find out about that? Were you planning to tell me before or after my Great Hall filled up with slavers and brigands to stand as  _legal witnesses_  to my coronation?"  
  
"Do you honestly not know how kingdoms are made?" he asks. "How they are built, and broken, and rebuilt, and defended?" William takes a step closer to her, his voice dropping. "The same way you regained your birthright, Princess. With heart's blood, with the bodies of men and horses swallowed by the incoming tide, with fire and death and ash. When it's all over, you have to take what's left and try to hold it all together, and trust me, you will need a King at your side to do it."  
  
Snow lifts her chin. "We'll see," she says, and walks away.  
  
***  
  
Whispers follow in her wake, gossiping servants and echoes of dreams blending together in her mind.  
  
 _Wearing horns before he even had a chance to wear a ring - let alone the crown,_  someone titters behind her.  
  
Snow ignores them all, and goes to the tower.  
  
 _Men make monsters of us,_  Ravenna tells her as she climbs the staircase.   _We may as well take what power that reputation affords us._  
  
***  
  
Her huntsman waits by the fire for her that night.  
  
"I didn't think you'd come tonight," she says, smiling

(with lips as red as blood).  
  
"My place is at your side," he says, taking her hands.  "Where have you been?  Your fingers are like ice."  
  
  
\- END -


End file.
